Cocktail of the Week: Flying Monkey

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"The gin trend has recently come to surface in the Bay Area bar scene. So many people come here to taste local flavors, I used the St. George Terroir, since it's a nearby distillery, as well as my favorite. The distiller Lance Winters was actually hiking up on [nearby] Mt. Tam, basically experienced all of the flavors in the gin — Douglas fir, California coastal sage, and, of course, juniper berries — and wanted to put those into liquid form. So he infused them into the spirit. The orange marmalade is delicious and has a sort of masculine note, while complementing the more exotic flavors of the absinthe.

"In order to break open the sage flavors, you don't really want to muddle them so much as slap them around a bit. It looks sort of funny, but it's the best way to bring out the flavors with herbs. For the absinthe, you want to pour a splash and swirl it around to coat the glass, then dump it out just to get a hint or essence without overpowering the drink." —Ellie Bobrowski, The Mortimer at Hotel Adagio, San Francisco